Latin grocer opens store in Pittsburg

Juvenal Chavez is growing his grocery store chain, modeled after hometown markets in Mexico and Latin America, with the newest and biggest market opening March 14 in Pittsburg.

Chavez, 49, is founder and CEO of Mi Pueblo Foods Inc., a San Jose grocery chain of 12 stores with 2,000 employees and $200 million in sales.

The site, off Highway 4, is a $4 million remodel of a 51,000-square-foot former Albertson’s. Brad Nail, Pittsburg economic development director, said Pittsburg and Bay Point’s populations are about 40 percent Hispanic, providing a customer base. Mi Pueblo spokeswoman Valeria Hernandez said more than 3,600 people applied for 245 jobs at the new store.

Chavez was a high school teacher in Michoacán, Mexico, before he and his wife immigrated in 1984. He worked as a butcher in a market owned by his brother David, who now operates six Chavez Supermarkets.

By March 1991, Chavez had spent his “last penny, borrowed from friends and family” to take over Country Time Meats in San Jose, one of the few places in the region selling specialty products to African Americans, Chavez said. “I was barely able to communicate with the customers.”

By 1994, changing demographics and a desire to provide an authentic shopping environment for Hispanic customers prompted him to change to Mi Pueblo (my town).

“Mi Pueblo Foods’ core customers are still largely underserved,” Hernandez said, “and we are opening stores in areas where there is a need for our unique offerings.”

Other Mi Pueblo stores are in Hayward, Mountain View, Oakland, Modesto, Watsonville, Salinas and San Jose. Chavez said Mi Pueblo is considering a former 15,000-square-foot Circuit City site in East Palo Alto for a new store.

“We are planning to grow anywhere from Fresno to Santa Rosa to Sacramento,” Chavez said.

The company, which employs about 40 in-house construction workers, has built one store from the ground up but, Chavez said, “it’s much easier to find existing buildings that are already on the market.”